In June 2026, the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition warned about the “predictable” wildfire lies we could expect to see, unless social media companies took action to limit the spread of harmful falsehoods that have repeatedly accompanied major wildfire events in previous years.
The following day, the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) warned about heatwave disinformation becoming “a trend. Extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, are regularly used to spread disinformation. Narratives are repeatedly the same.”
If major tech platforms had wanted to prevent another surge of climate disinformation, they had ample warning.
Instead, in the weeks that followed, a heatwave made possible only by climate change and a wildfire season worsened by climate change provided disinfluencers another opportunity to recycle familiar false narratives. The same false narratives resurfaced across social media, demonstrating that the patterns identified by CAAD and EDMO remain entrenched despite years of evidence and repeated warnings.
This report documents how climate disinformation spread during these events, recurring narratives that dominated online conversations, and the role social media platforms played in allowing those narratives to reach millions of users despite advance warning that they would emerge.
Climate change is already making extreme weather more frequent, more intense, and more dangerous. The public should not also have to contend with social media platforms amplifying falsehoods that undermine public understanding and can put lives at risk. We don’t have to tolerate social media companies making it harder to protect lives during these increasingly dangerous and destructive events.
Extreme weather is becoming more dangerous as the climate changes. The online information environment should help people understand these events, not make them harder to navigate. This report shows the persistence of predictable climate disinformation is not simply a consequence of polarized debate, it is the result of repeated platform failures that policymakers can no longer afford to ignore.
Read the full report from CAAD here.